From blind spots to real-time visibility - logging every machine event
Machine BlackBox started as a focused answer to one problem at ERKO: nobody knew a machine had gone down until it had already cost them production time. It’s since become the core hardware/software product behind 54Soft’s IoT Platform for Manufacturing - the same log-capture approach, now built to serve any manufacturer who needs real visibility into their machines instead of finding out about problems after the fact.
Overview
- Captures operational logs directly from manufacturing machines in real time
- Forms the core of 54Soft's own IoT Platform for Manufacturing product line
- First deployed and validated in production at ERKO
- Gives operators and management visibility into outages and machine performance without manual monitoring
Manufacturers typically find out about a machine outage or a performance drop only after someone notices it on the shop floor - by then, the production time is already lost. Machine BlackBox is 54Soft's own device that sits on the machine and captures its operational logs continuously, turning that blind spot into real-time data. It's the foundation of our IoT Platform for Manufacturing, and ERKO was the first production deployment that proved it out.
Solution & Result
Machine BlackBox captures logs directly from the machine's own control and event data, rather than relying on manual checks or operator reports. Every event - faults, stops, cycle completions - is recorded as it happens, giving a continuous, unfiltered record of what the machine actually did.
That log stream is what powers the rest of the platform: NIS2-relevant production visibility, dashboards and a mobile app to check machine status remotely, and a feed that can be connected to an AI agent through our MCP server for further analysis. ERKO was the first factory running it in production, and the same device now underpins the IoT Platform for Manufacturing we offer more broadly.
Check Some
Of Our Recent Work.
ERKO - BPS
Diagnosing and fixing performance bottlenecks in ERKO's BPS software. Extending it with model import support for Cad files DWG, DXF and STEP files.